There's No Guiding Light
by simplyprologue
Summary: They were all pieces on the board, but they were all interchangeable-this is the story of how Kara Thrace became the dying leader. S4 AU.


**A/N: **A friend wanted someone but Laura as the dying leader... and Kara Thrace felt like the next best choice. I may have also interjected some of my own headcanon. Thanks for reading!

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They were all pieces on the board, spinning to their destinies as guided by a hand unseen, each move as unanticipated as the last, leading them to some unforeseen conclusion (they, after all, weren't the player. They could only pretend to be God, pretend to be in control of their circumstances. The truth, as it were, was much less comforting) and playing by unforeseen rules—

—they were all pieces on the board, but they were all interchangeable.

(_That was the story of how Kara Thrace became the dying leader._)

* * *

The Opera House was much more. It took, and it took, to build them greater and higher until they could not be kept inside their skins, like stars blowing out into the black of space. It was a place of making—hybrids and gods and conclusions and beginnings.

That was the story of original sin, over and over and over again-each place on the cycle inhabits two places on the wheel: the fall, and the flood. But the Opera House, was the first.

(_That was the story of the beginning, and the end._)

* * *

Kara Thrace returned to the fleet. She did not hold a gun to Laura Roslin's head. Like a prophet to the oracle, they fell, clutching the fabric of the other's shirt, rendering belief once more. The Opera House had made them less, returning from death had made them less human, but full of exceeding rage and love. (Stars going supernova. An exchanging of fates; shortened telomeres and homeward bound. They fell and they fell and they fell. End of line.)

Adama did not want to let her go again, so soon. Either of them again, so soon.

Roslin gave the girl a commission, and a mission. _Bring us to the end of our journey_. _Find us the path to Earth, Kara Thrace. _Made her a leader, molded her into her image, as were they tied again by faith and the sight of the gods.

(The Opera House was a place of making—hybrids and gods and monsters, and tyrants too. They were both less, until they-built faith inside the other, urged on love and tenuous, beating, bones that cried out like a wailing child—made each other human again. But much, much, more. Gods fell and rose. Humanity, as it were, was always the end goal. Gods had always craved the taste of death.)

She found the rebels.

And shaky truths.

_Hera was not the first. _They never should have trusted Cavil. _Kara Thrace, daughter of Daniel. _(_Daughter of William, _she thought. _And Laura, _she amended, after. Either way, it was a legacy of blood and betrayal, fortune's wheel forever spinning them towards mutual self-destruction, even from Kobol) _You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end._

_End of line. End of line. End of line._

The pact was sealed. Both sides looked to her. Kara Thrace, both sides of the same coin—madness and greatness, sinner and saint, human and cylon.

(Hybrid resurrection was a failed experiment, Kara Thrace the first and only test run. Telomeres shortened, providing instability, peeling away the human phenotype to show the hastened entropy below. _End of line. _She would fall apart. It was only a matter of time before she went supernova, but like a dying star, she would clear the path. Cavil's greatest failure would lead to his ultimate destruction. He built the key-_parents must die in order for children to come into their own, he had built his part of the wheel_-he had created her, and now he could not wash his hands of her.)

The Diloxin treatment worked. Laura Roslin knew the truth before the rest; her faith had been shaken, but never truly broken. She knew what bent Kara's smile; the universe was unwaveringly pragmatic, but not wholly unmerciful. In her last, Kara Thrace found her family, if only to die for them.

(_That was the story of loss—for a sacrifice to be made, there must be a cost._)

* * *

Laura Roslin found her in the Opera House, as the battle raged around them. But it was calm, and Kara Thrace became, the gilt edges peeling away to reveal the truth no one else would have to die to see. Laura Roslin walked with her for as long as the Opera House allowed her, was with her, until the last, and then tucked her hair behind her ears and kissed her on the forehead. Laura Roslin was the one who let her go, Laura Roslin was the only one who understood _how_. Laura Roslin, who had once been a dying leader-

-but it was Kara who knew how to play the piano. Eyes cast forward over the golden fingers of dawn, day broke over the golden-haired, fleet-footed child as she stepped towards the stage. It was a melody, handed down, through programming and progeny.

She was at the end of her skin, more at home here, in the space left in between human and cylon. Her fingers dusted over the keys; muscle memory, and something more to make her something less.

_Life has a melody. _Gods and angels, gods and monsters. _A dying leader_. She went alone. The Opera House became alive; as she played, stars spun out of orbit and they all fell, fell, fell.

The truth, as it were: Kara Thrace would die for humanity's sins, for the price to bring them daybreak. Weights and measures, costs and sacrifices-the irony of it all, was that Kara Thrace never feared death, only being forgotten. But they would all forget them, now. They would all be forgotten, their names replaced over and over again by history, timelines mangled and upended, their humanity wrenched from them for the sake of parable and doctrine. But that was not the truth of the gods.

(The universe had always had a sense of humor.)

Stars erupted behind her corneas, and she took them home. _Where have you taken us, Kara? _Her father, in truth, asked. No wonder why the histories of the gods had crossed paths and bloodlines. There was more than one way to become someone's child, just as there was more than way one to see the truth.

(There was truth, of course, but it was not meant for humans. You had to be less. Less, and ready. And Kara Thrace had been ready from the first time she flew into a star. _Photons and gamma rays and melodies in time and space, the only mountain of the gods was the truth, left unleavened._)

She fell out of her skin—Kara Thrace had been left behind in the Opera House, her soul left to find the beyond. But she was not the first, tracing the path of the infinite. _All of this has happened before_. Tamara, Zoe, Daniel. She could find her way back home. She was less, but so much more, just no longer fit for this plane.

(_That was the story of how Kara Thrace died._)

* * *

Athena leapt, but Aurora broke up in the atmosphere over Earth on the colonist's first morning, flying the first flames of the day over humanity's last night.

And Sam, her darling Sam, was the sun.

(_That was the story of how Kara Thrace brought them to their end._)

* * *

(_End of line.)_

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**Reviews are very much appreciated. **


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